Tuesday, August 26, 2014

Sourdough Surprises: Monkey Bars

(Apologies for the late post – my
computer spent 10 days in repair and blogging from my phone wasn't
feasible).

Why had I never made granola bars?

I'm on a high protein diet and I have a
major sweet tooth. My local Vitamin Shoppe knows me by name and knows
I'll never leave without protein powder or bars. I eat some sort of
protein bar every day. I love to cook and bake. Seems like it's easy
to put two and two together, right?

I have my reasons (convenience,
mainly), but Sourdough Surprises challenged us to make granola bars.
It was a curious possibility (I'd never heard of using any flour
based binders before). Still, especially as I have my sourdough
protein project that I occasionally get to working on, it seemed like
something I should take head on.

I'm actually not a fan of true granola
bars (I frequently take them to work, where the Florida heat melts
the binder and turns them to a sticky crumbly mess), and with the
flour in the sourdough starter, it made sense to make them more cake
like – sort of like the Kashi Soft Baked bars. Not having a whole
lot of similar recipes to go on (and a half-empty jar of Peanut Butter & Co White Chocolate Wonderful calling my name) I got
inventive:

Mix everything but oats in a blender. Pour over
oats & toss to coat. Spread in a greased 8" square pan &
bake for 10 minutes at 350.

Simple enough (although the peanut
butter flavor got lost behind the vanilla and banana). They also were
not pocket friendly, meaning I couldn't take them to work. As far as
taste goes, though, they were definitely on par with some of my
favorite commercially produced bars. I will probably be playing with
this recipe for the Sourdough Protein project.

On the other hand...why would I make my
own when I can find things like this?